The feeling of throwing a backflip is surreal. You’re floating up-side-down, you can feel the fear initially, but then you see the landing and if you’re angular momentum is true, the fear dissipates. Once you can see the landing, you can easily adjust yourself to spin faster or slower (by tucking or opening up respectively) depending on how far away the landing is.
The moments when you can’t see your landing that are the most intense. That’s the scary part. The part that takes skill. The part that give you the biggest rush.
The bigger you go, the slower you flip. So the final equation for the backflip is simple
Bigger you go = Slower you flip = Longer you can’t see your landing = Bigger the Rush
The video above captures that rush for the viewer very well. This is one of the few times I enjoyed the POV more than I think I’d have enjoyed the straight video. Going with the skier as he throws this flip taps into that intensity. I’ve you’ve thrown a backflip anywhere (trampoline, pool, cliff) you understand how fun this flip must have been. If you haven’t thrown a backflip, I think this video still speaks to you as well and give you glimpse into what it would be like to get up-side-down for 100 feet.
The video in this post is of Swedish skier Jacob Wester throwing an enormous backflip off an old mining trestle in Telluride, Colorado that was built in the 1920s. The amount of air he got is easy to appreciate in this POV video as you can feel just how long he was up-side-down in this shot.
Call me old school (I am in my mid forties), but floating a big laid out back is still one of the coolest feeling airs and this vid sums it up pretty well.
Sweet vid. I would have been yelling right at my landing. That was clean.
Already saw this video and loved watching it again.
This backflip vid is sick and so is Jamie Burge.